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| Artist: | Siouxsie And The Banshees | Album: | Join Hands |
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| Year: | 1979 | Genre: | Punk |
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Review:
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Siouxsie And The Banshees Join Hands This is reckoned to be the least of the Banshees output by many, and at least one reviewer cites only Icon as a decent song. Which misses the point. Sure, it hangs together the way a decent song should, but so do some of the others, and I think the majority of reviewers mark this down because they don't find it accessible. They shouldn't find it accessible, unless it draws on something they are also part of, it's not there for those who revise punk's history to suit their image of it. Most of the songs are very uncompromising, verging on the brutal beauty of Godflesh, and at least 25 years ahead of time. This is alienation written in searing tones of glorious enmity, right from the start where it questions who all those lost and desperate soldiers dies for in the first world war, to the apocalyptic rant at the end which makes it clear that we can't depend on anyone, let alone some idealised god for our salvation. That last song truly is a rant, it's not a song at all, and shouldn't be judged as one, but if you want to know what the first outburst of punk in England sounded like live, you won't do much better than to listen to that. The one before it I don't like at all, but that's not meant to be liked, either, it's a gaunt nursery tune with two themes at once, a maternal presence both benign and sinister, the benign one to the foreground, but its echo speaks of a ghastly travesty of caring that brutalises and stifles. The one before that is great, a swinging thundering song I have always loved, called Playground Twist. Before that, Premature Burial. This is where that glorious enmity I mentioned finds its strongest focus here, in the last few bars, this is the sort of moment that made punk blast is memory into nearly every mind that encountered it. The first side ends in Icon, a great sound, it's like a church falling and spearing the aghast iconographers in the eyes as the relics they value so much come falling right into their faces while they look up in disbelief. Before that, Placebo Effect, one of the few songs here that spans between the Banshees first, Scream, and their later works. A eldritch portrayal of the magical aspect of things we invest so much fear and science in, and the way those things corrupt when we waste all our power on them, a theme Siouxsie gets into a lot. Before that, Regal Zone, the stony state and its ancient heads regarding us. But only if we choose to hold their gaze. And back to the start, the empty shadows made by those who fell so needlessly in the First World War, victims of all those individual oppressions that the rest of the album deal with. And to end at the end, the empty shambling prayer that holds so much of this together goes on, and on. You can hear it when the sound is gone. Even Godflesh can learn from this.  |
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| Author: | Lostgallifreyan | Reviewed: | 20-02-2006 |
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